Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery (2 page)

‘Who found him?’

Already bored, Maxwell was inspecting his pocket watch. ‘One of the labourers.’

‘I’ll need to speak to him.’ Knox hadn’t found any money or possessions in the dead man’s pockets – perhaps someone had stolen them.

Maxwell grimaced. Clearly he didn’t like taking orders from a man of Knox’s rank. ‘Lord Cornwallis wants a word first.’

‘With me dressed like this?’ Knox gestured at his dirty coat and muddy boots.

‘His Lordship was insistent.’

Knox cast his eyes down towards the body. ‘I’ll need someone to help me. I left my cart at the lodge.’

‘You go and see his Lordship, I’ll make sure someone brings the cart and body over to the house.’

‘Tell his Lordship I’ll be with him shortly.’ Knox rubbed his sore eyes and tried to compose his thoughts. ‘I should have a look around, see if anything has been left behind.’

Maxwell glanced at the darkening sky. ‘Don’t be too long. His
Lordship doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He wants you to go straight to the drawing room.’

Knox found nothing of interest on or near the corpse. It stood to reason that the man had been murdered there, by the stream, but the blood had long since drained into the earth. The body hadn’t started to rot but then it had been cold, especially at night and Knox didn’t think the corpse had been there for more than a day. Once he had clambered up the bank, Knox lingered for a moment, watching the slow-moving water and wondering whether he had missed something important. Then he turned and started the short walk back to the main house.

Dundrum House was a four-floor Palladian mansion built from locally quarried stone, seven bay windows long. Knox found the place more intimidating than beautiful, its scale too grand for its surroundings, too removed from the world of the nearby village, as though to underline that its owner belonged to a higher class of men and could do as he liked.

Knox had visited his mother many times using the ‘poor door’ but he had never used the front entrance. His mother had worked in the kitchens for as long as he could remember and he knew the labyrinthine passages of the cellar far better than he knew the main house. He ascended the steps one by one and paused in the entrance hall. On the walls, Cornwallis’s ancestors seemed to glower at him. The Moores had forcibly acquired the estate in the aftermath of Cromwell’s rampage across Ireland two hundred years earlier. Since then the family had earned a reputation for muscular Protestantism and the current inheritor of the family title, Asenath Moore, the third Viscount Cornwallis, was cut from the same cloth.

When he entered the drawing room, Knox found Cornwallis warming himself by the open fire. A small, wizened man with a bald head shaped like an acorn, Cornwallis wore tan knee-breeches and a black cutaway coat. Greeting Knox with a curt nod, he sat down in an armchair next to the fire and regarded Knox without speaking, as if inspecting a museum exhibit in a vaguely dissatisfied manner.

‘Your mother has kept me informed of your progress. It has been,
I’m told, quite satisfactory.’ He removed his handkerchief and wiped particles of food from the corners of his mouth.

Knox bowed his head. ‘Thank you, your Lordship.’

This show of deference seemed to please the older man. ‘Maxwell tells me he’s shown you the body down by Woodcock Grove.’

Knox knew better than to talk when a question hadn’t been asked.

‘I have no idea who this man was or what business he had on my estate. I think we can safely assume him to be a poacher and a vagrant.’

A vagrant, Knox thought, whose clothes had been made by a Savile Row tailor.

‘I don’t want word of this unfortunate occurrence spreading around the estate. For this reason, I took the decision
not
to solicit the assistance of the two sub-constables here in Dundrum. They’re good men, both of them, but they’re liable to blab.’

‘I understand, your Lordship, but there will have to be an inquest …’

‘That has been taken care of,’ the old man said.

‘Very good, your Lordship.’ Knox tried to swallow. Unlike his own calloused hands, Cornwallis’s were as smooth as marble. ‘But it can sometimes be hard to keep such matters from the local people. The man who found the body, for example, will want to brag about it …’

‘He’ll be warned, you can be assured of that,’ Cornwallis said, interrupting. ‘No, sir, if word of this abhorrence reaches the ears of the village it won’t have come from anyone on this estate.’

Knox took a short while to assimilate the threat. He was starting to see why Cornwallis had asked for him. ‘You want the matter handled quietly.’

The old man’s face brightened. ‘
Quietly
. That’s exactly it. I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

Cornwallis most definitely hadn’t been quiet about the murder of his former agent. He had travelled to Clonmel to harangue the county inspector in person and had warned that troop reinforcements would have to be forthcoming.

Cornwallis stood up and wandered across to the window. ‘I want you to take the body away. I don’t want to see or hear of it again.’

It was said as though the matter was a trifling one. Knox could
have pointed out that such an order was tantamount to interfering in a police investigation but it would have been futile to do so. Cornwallis’s influence was such that there was no gap between his ambition and official policy.

‘You will have heard some things – some unfair things – said about me in Cashel, I expect. That I am a monster; that I do not care about the well-being of the local people.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m here, am I not, even though my sons have chosen to spend the winter in London. I’m simply trying to attend to the matters of my estate as best I can.’ Cornwallis tapped the heels of his boots against the floor.

An awkward silence ensued. Knox wondered why the old man had felt the need to justify himself.

‘Will that be all, your Lordship?’

‘Asenath. Call me Asenath.’ He wandered across to where Knox was standing. ‘You’re a good boy.’ Stretching out his hand, he tapped Knox gently on the cheek.

Knox shifted his weight from foot to foot and waited to be dismissed.

‘Your mother has been a good and faithful servant to this family.’ Cornwallis waved his hand, as though flicking away a fly. ‘She’s asked to see you. You’ll find her in the kitchens.’

His mother took him in her arms, even though her hands were covered in stuffing. Knox was known by most of the women who worked there and they shouted their greetings. Pulling back from her hug, Knox surveyed his mother with affection. She was tall and elegant. Her thin, straw-coloured hair was tied up under a lace bonnet and her skin was blotchy from the heat of the kitchen. He still thought her a fine-looking woman, for her age, but each time he saw her, he worried that she seemed older. This time she also seemed thinner, but he reassured himself with the thought that there wasn’t likely to be a shortage of food in Cornwallis’s kitchen.

‘How are you, son?’ She wiped her hands on her apron and touched him on the cheek. ‘And James?’

James was his son, her grandson. He noticed she hadn’t asked after his wife. ‘They’re fine. Martha’s fine, too.’

‘It’s the wee’un I worry about.’

Knox looked at the goose lying in front of her and the vegetables waiting to be cut. ‘It’s sometimes hard to believe people are dying of starvation.’

‘Quiet, boy. You don’t want his Lordship to hear you talkin’ like that, do you?’

‘You think what he’s done, what he’s doing, is right? Turning families out of their homes?’

His mother looked at him, half-amused. This was familiar ground and usually they chose to respect each other’s different opinions of the aristocrat. ‘Is it his fault the crops failed again this year?’

This time, Knox felt, there was a prickliness to her tone and he wondered whether he should speak his mind or not.

His mother sighed. ‘I’ve served him for almost forty years and I swear, he’s not a bad man. And he’s been good to us, all of us, your brothers, your father, you too.’

Knox felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t seen his youngest brother, Peter, for a number of months and it struck him that with the spread of disease brought on by the famine he was more at risk than most. Peter had always been a sickly child but a bout of the pox when he was eight had nearly finished him off. Six or seven years on, his speech and mental faculties were still those of a young boy. As a result Peter had never been able to work and the family did what they could to protect him from the hardships of the world. Even their father did his bit, but it was Knox’s mother who bore the brunt of the care.

‘How is Peter?’

‘You’d know if you ever paid us a visit.’

Knox didn’t answer. He wondered whether his mother knew the real reason he kept away from the family cabin and why he hadn’t made more of an effort to get to know his two much younger brothers.

As if reading his mind, his mother said, ‘Your father’s back has been playing up.’

Knox shuffled from foot to foot and looked around the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk about his father. ‘I should get going. I have to ride back to Cashel and it’ll be dark in a couple of hours.’

His mother smiled and nodded. ‘You take good care of yourself,
son. These are terrible times.’ Her smile evaporated, lines deepening on her forehead.

Knox wondered whether she knew that a man had been killed only a few hundred yards from where they were standing. ‘Can I ask you a question before I go?’

Sarah Knox tucked in a loose strand of hair that had escaped from her bonnet. ‘Of course.’

‘It’s about my position …’

As a rule, policemen weren’t meant to take up positions in their native counties or the counties they were attached to by marriage. But eight years earlier, there had been a shortfall in numbers and a notice had been placed in the local newspaper. Knox had applied and had been accepted. He’d always thought that he had been accepted for the position on his own merit.

‘When I first applied, did his Lordship put in a good word for me with Hastings?’

His mother retreated to the wooden table where the goose was waiting. ‘I honestly don’t know, son. I might’ve mentioned that I didn’t want you to leave home. What mother wouldn’t do that?’

Knox went over to her and gently touched her face. ‘I’m not angry with you. But a few moments ago, you said we all owed his Lordship something and I just wanted to know what you meant.’

His mother sighed. ‘I was referring to the wages he pays me, that’s all.’ Having made sure no one was looking, she picked up a thick cut of cured meat and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Don’t say a word,’ she whispered. ‘Just take it, for you, Martha and the infant.’

Knox wanted to give it back but one of the other kitchen-servants had just come into the room. If someone saw what his mother had done and reported her, she could lose her job.

He went to kiss her on the cheek and, as he did so, she grabbed his wrist. ‘You’re a good boy, Michael,’ she whispered, ‘always was, and I love you very much, but this time you need to think about the whole family.’

The first potato crop had failed the previous autumn. On that occasion, the local authorities – in consort with the government in London – had made relief provisions and only a few people had perished. But when the crop had failed a second time one year later,
the new Whig administration decided to leave the relief efforts to the traders, supposing they would import the necessary food. When the scale of the crisis became apparent, the traders tried to purchase additional maize and corn from Europe and the United States but prices had soared throughout the autumn and the first part of the winter. Now most ordinary people couldn’t afford to eat and there was little that impecunious local boards could do.

Earlier in the year, Knox and other policemen had helped to protect convoys of wheat departing for Waterford and eventually England, where the grain would earn the greatest price. As far as he knew, the grain had reached its final destination, but in light of the current shortages, the decision to export so much food seemed immoral if not downright wicked.

He thought about the food he’d just seen in Cornwallis’s kitchen and trembled at the injustice. Knox liked to think of himself as honest and plain speaking, but given the opportunity to confront the aristocrat, he had said and done nothing. He tried not think about how this reflected on his character.

The sky in the west was flushed with pale streaks of light and the air felt cool and damp on his skin. Knox kept up a gentle pace, keen not to drive the horse too hard, since Maxwell wouldn’t have thought to feed or water it. Just before departing, he had talked to the labourer who’d first discovered the body. The man had told him nothing new and had strenuously denied taking anything from the dead man’s pockets. With nothing but the wind for company, Knox’s thoughts turned to the cured meat. He hadn’t eaten in twelve hours and his stomach was swollen with hunger. Taking it from his pocket, he brought it up to his nose and sniffed. Knox hadn’t seen, let alone eaten, meat for six months, and the urge to gnaw at it was almost too much to bear. Just one mouthful, he told himself. But if he ate a mouthful, he would end up gobbling the whole thing, and then how could he face his wife? Instead he returned the meat to his pocket, tried to distract himself by thinking about the body behind him.

About halfway along the old road a pauper scampered out in front of him, waving his arms. Knox thought it was some kind of ruse and that the man was part of a gang of robbers. He tugged the reins and went to retrieve his pistol. Quickly, though, he could see that the
man was in distress; he was talking rapidly in broken Irish. Knox told him to slow down and explain what had happened. The man yanked Knox’s arm and led him through a gate to his cabin, where a lantern was hanging on a hook by the door. In halted speech he said that he’d left for a week in order to find road-building work in Thurles. Pushing open the door, Knox could smell the rotting corpses. There were three of them, limbs tangled up in the middle of the room, their carcasses gnawed almost clean by rats. Knox stared at them, not knowing what to say. Next to him, the husband slumped to his knees and started weeping. Knox sniffed the air and looked for a shovel. If the women and two children had died from a fever it was important to bury them as quickly as possible, to halt the spread of disease.